How Setting Goals Put Me In Holes — And The Value Of Wasted Time

Doing “nothing” can be very productive work.

I Failed

I have failed. I didn’t publish anything for two weeks. I didn’t meet the writing requirement I had set at the beginning of this endeavor for the rest of the foreseeable future.

I have brought shame to my family, and shall carry this burden for the rest of my life. This atrocity shall stain my legacy for all of eternity, and I shall be remembered only by the moniker, “The Dry Pen.”

I’m being hyperbolic. But yeah, I didn’t adhere to my goal. It’s the first few days I’ve missed since I began writing here. The outcome was entirely in my control. So I could’ve done it. But I promise, I had a very good reason.

I did not write for the last two weeks because…

…I didn’t feel like it.

…

Hacking Away

I always felt like I was a broken person. I’d read all these anecdotes about people working these 16-hour days with nonstop, machine-like output. And then there was me, who was mentally exhausted within a few hours.

There were many days when progress on my personal projects was minimal. Weeks went by with nothing to show for it. I couldn’t even be bothered to turn on my laptop.

The implications of this were not good. If my focus was so seemingly limited, there was no way I’d survive the 9–5 in the real world. There had to be a way to “fix” myself.

That’s when I started the search for perfect answers that didn’t exist.

So I saw this one method preached everywhere. It was called the Pomodoro Technique. I decided to try it out. I set a timer for 25 minutes and sat in front of the computer to continue writing my story.

A few minutes passed. I had no ideas to jot down.

…

The deafening silence continued. Five minutes had already passed. There were only 20 minutes left. And I still had nothing to show for it. Finally, an idea struck, and I typed down a sentence or two.

But then I was stuck on how to progress the dialogue again. And time continued to tick down. I couldn’t help but switch back to the timer and watch in frustration as minute by minute slipped away.

Now there were only 10 minutes left.

The session was 60% over already. Maybe this was all hopeless. I changed some phrasing a few times before the alarm went off. And with that, time was already up.

This obviously did not make me feel good. Even with this super productivity life hack, I wasn’t able to get much done. Maybe I was just defective.

So another session would pass. The same thing would happen. The next would come. But still no dice. The negative feelings kept compounding upon each block, growing exponentially into this void.

Clearly, this wasn’t working for me.
But it said it should have… so what did this mean?

Catching Up

A pattern was beginning to emerge in my work. I would tell myself that I’d completely polish one scene per week. At this rate, I’d have a largely finalized game story a few months before my self-imposed deadline.

With that extra time, I could let it sit and then come back to it for a few more revisions. Not taking my time and rushing to finish was one mistake I’d made before.

However, as one might guess, I couldn’t keep up with this either. I wanted to be halfway done by midyear. But with less than a month left until then at the time of writing, I’m only a quarter of the way there.

At first, I was frustrated again. I was doing nothing each week.
And so I thought to myself…

“Next week, I’ll have to make up for that and do two scenes.”

(NARRATOR: But he did not do two scenes. Nary did he do one.)

The guilt of being unproductive again weighed me down. The mental load kept piling on and on, further hindering me from making any progress. Which led to even more guilt.

The same thing happened while I was writing the first draft. I read that forcing yourself to write 500 words a day would be helpful. It didn’t seem like a lot. Yet I still missed many, many days. It felt terrible.

There were no solutions. Nothing was working. I certainly wasn’t working. I could not fathom why I was like this. It was killing me inside. And clearly, these methods I had found would not work.

At least, they wouldn’t work for me.

Square Peg, Round Hole

In hindsight, these methods were a brute-force solution for a misdiagnosed problem. This entire time, I believed my lack of progress was purely due to laziness. That’s what I was reading online.

“If you’re not making progress, it’s because you’re just not working hard enough. Something something discipline, just sit down and force yourself to work.”

— some post

I have had days where I’ve been in front of my computer for 8 to 10 hours without a break. They were rare, but they existed. But I’ve also had days where I’ve just lied in bed all day.

The key must lie in comparing these then. If I just look at what I did differently on those productive days and apply it to every day, I’d be chugging away in no time. So, let’s take a look…

…

There was nothing. Not a single difference in action.

None of those days were the result of any mindset shift or life hack. Yet for some reason, the ideas flowed naturally then. I had no mind block or any of that I had experienced before.

But that didn’t make sense. Something had to cause it. But nothing was different…

However, there were indeed differences. They were difficult to determine, but they existed. My mind was more relaxed. I had more exposure to writing examples than I had months prior.

It’s hard to say for certain that these were the only contributors to my impasse. But what could be said was that these processes took time. It took time to find inspiration and references, or reduce my stress levels.

That is why trying to make myself “disciplined” was not only ineffective, but actually counterproductive. I was expecting myself to do work without an idea to actually work off of, and without the proper self-maintenance.

As demonstrated from my trials with the Pomodoro Technique, pretty much all of this time was spent staring agonizingly at my screen, just as clueless as I had been 20 minutes ago.

This led to me doubting myself even more, which skyrocketed my stress and prevented me from being able to think even further.

One could say that the most time I wasted was not with leisure, but actually through forcing myself to remain “working” in situations where it was just not happening.

Know Thy Limits

The fact that I was not feeling good was an indicator that something was wrong. Yet instead, I was made to believe that this warning was a sign of laziness instead.

In essence, I could not trust myself to be productive.

My exposure to all these claims of what a productive day should be had warped my perception. The mismatch between my experience and what I read was the main cause of this frustration toward myself.

Some said that the eight-hour workday was actually eight hours of pure work. On the other side, some claimed that breaks and meetings took up more than half of that time.

There have been studies that postulate people can only focus hard for up to 3 hours a day. And I’ve also read that 1–2 hours of creative work, such as writing, is a very productive day.

Which of these claims do I believe?

None of them. At least, not directly.

That isn’t to say that any are wrong. However, most of what I’ve read online is general or anecdotal, and doesn’t necessarily apply to me personally.

I’m still figuring out what works best for me.
So how can others who know nothing about me know?

My perceptions were much more malleable in the past. I was a bit younger. I had rock-bottom self-esteem. And I had fewer experiences to base my reasoning on. So really, anything I read about myself online flew.

“If you do this, you are that.”

”This is what productive people do. This is what productive people don’t do.”

I believed pretty much everything before. But eventually, I decided to trust myself. Not just my bodily signals, but also my lived experiences. I tried to believe that I am capable of getting things done.

I don’t have much life experience at 22. But I’ve been working on my endeavors for at least six years now. There must be at least some things I’ve learned in which I can believe in. And there are.

Doing stuff over these years, I’ve noticed that my attention indeed tapers off after a few hours. It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but generally, that’s what I’ve observed.

With that revelation, I’m certainly inclined to believe that 1–3 hours of creative work is the typical limit of a productive day for me. But it’s not just because I read about it on a forum.

I’ve ascertained it by experiencing it for myself.

So once I reach that point, I usually just use the rest of the day to do what I want. If I still feel like I can do more, great. But if not, I won’t stress too much about it either. I can’t ignore my internal signs anymore.

Not Bad

The thing is, I’ve completed a fifty-thousand-word first draft in 8 months by working the way I’ve been working. I’m currently at 16 months, aiming to finish my project by the 24-month mark. But it could take longer.

There’s the initial writing, soundtrack, iterative editing, storyboarding, commissioning artists, and more. All of these are processes that I’ve progressed in over time. I always question whether I’m too slow.

I saw others that had written longer, better stories in less time. I used that as a benchmark for my goals without considering my circumstances. And when I inevitably fell short, I viewed a perfectly decent outcome as a failure.

Really thinking about it, two or three years for a completed novel-length game doesn’t sound too bad to me. It’s not even my profession, and I still continue learning throughout the entire process.

Ultimately, in the end, it gets done regardless of the time spent. Something is still gained for each day the project is in progress.

So perhaps in the bigger picture, the days spent doing nothing…
…Really meant nothing.

Nothing Is Nothing

I’m on social media like YouTube a lot. And I’ll be honest, there’s really no benefit to this at all. It’s an addictive time vampire that I keep impulsively switching to, and it leaves me emotionally exhausted and depressed.

However, there are solo activities that are quite refreshing and relaxing. Like story-based, single-player video games. When I finish them, I also look for derivative works like fanfiction to explore the universe further.

What’s interesting is that playing video games and reading often contribute toward progressing my projects. As aforementioned, a significant blocker to progress was a lack of direction and ideas.

The best way to obtain those would be to look at similar works. I can analyze how other works structured their stories. I can see if there are any mechanics that I could pull inspiration from.

Through this supposedly unproductive, wasteful time, I’ve gained many ideas for my next project. I’ve changed the structure of my own writing to flow a bit better. And I’m relaxed and enjoying myself to boot.

So if anything, my wasted time has been more productive than much of the time I’ve spent “working.”

Just because I’m not actively staring at my document, doesn’t mean that my brain has shut down. I’m still able to think about that scene I was stuck on writing.

As I’m reading through other media, something can spark an idea. Maybe I don’t open my project for another week. But I’ll still have the idea to execute then. Perhaps then, I’ll have fleshed it out even further.

The lines between making progress and relaxation are pretty blurred here. So whether it’s five minutes, eight hours, or a two-month break from this particular project, I try to just let what feels natural happen.

By doing so, I can actually enjoy my free time, instead of obsessing over what should’ve been.

And when I do regain that feeling — that desire to get things done,
I know I’m ready to make some good progress.

Trust

I haven’t gotten a lot done with my projects in these last few months. And I skipped out on writing for a couple of weeks. Heck, this very article took well over a week.

Each day, I would only add a few paragraphs before hitting an impasse on how to structure the rest of this reflection, and going off to enjoy the rest of my day. But despite that, I’ve reached the end still.

I may have been able to sit down and “discipline” myself to write. Maybe I might’ve finished this a week ago. Maybe I’m an underperformer.

But I’m going to try to trust myself.

I’ll trust that the words didn’t flow until now for a reason. I’ll trust that I’m on a decent pace to finish my work, at a level of quality I’m satisfied with, and while maintaining my enjoyment of the process.

Most of all, I’ll trust that I don’t need to force myself to do that. I’ll trust that when the circumstances are right, progress will come naturally in good time. Not because I read that it would, but because that’s what I’ve experienced.

So if I don’t finish my project by early 2024, so be it. If I can’t sustain writing on Medium biweekly, so be it.

I’ll take the time to do what works for me.